Picnic pleasures

Before I really get into the heart of this blog I should explain why i'm doing it.

Summer: it's about lazy weekends with friends, hoped for blue skies, chilled wine and barbecues.
It's about thawing out the bones and brains and remembering why we work so hard to enjoy such fleeting pleasures.

But for my wife, Summer is the culmination of a year's work. She runs summer concerts as stately homes in the south east of England - and one near Manchester - so for her summer is about long hours, tiring days, crowds of people, celebrity singers, snatched moments of quiet.

I wanted to blog that dual nature of summer in our lives - share some times with friends, celebrate my wife's hard work and just keep a record of one, hopefully great, summer.

Of course, it's only April. But today was one of those days that gave the first hints of what June, July and August could offer as we spent our time with two friends under the sun in Richmond.

Walking along the riverbank I thought I'd start my blog today with a few pictures and an optimistic sense of what the future holds.

This weekend our friend Chris was keen to remind us of the outlook of the recently departed author Saul Bellow - that every day we should wake up and revel in the pleasure of simply being alive.

Amen to that.